Dolores (Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)
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"Dolores", subtitled "Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs", is a poem by A. C. Swinburne first published in his 1866 ''
Poems and Ballads ''Poems and Ballads, First Series'' is the first collection of poems by Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in 1866. The book was instantly popular, and equally controversial. Swinburne wrote about many taboo topics, such as lesbianism, sado-ma ...
''. The poem, in 440 lines, regards the figure of the titular "Dolores, Our Lady of Pain", thus named at the close of many of its stanzas.


Themes

The speaker of the poem is the voice of a besotted lover, faced with, and lamenting, Swinburne's particular ruthless and grim representation of the
sacred feminine A goddess is a female deity. In many known cultures, goddesses are often linked with literal or metaphorical pregnancy or imagined feminine roles associated with how women and girls are perceived or expected to behave. This includes themes of s ...
, embodied here as the Lady of Pain. In these respects, the poem shares its central themes with "Satia te Sanguine" from the same 1866 collection, as does it similarly share its
sadomasochistic Sadomasochism ( ) is the giving and receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual pleasure from their acts. While the terms sadist and masochist refer ...
imagery with that poem and many others within Swinburne's corpus.


Meter

The poem's meter is a fairly regular
anapestic An anapaest (; also spelled anapæst or anapest, also called antidactylus) is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long syllable, long one; in accentual stress met ...
trimeter In poetry, a trimeter (Greek for "three measure") is a metre of three metrical feet per line. Examples: : When here // the spring // we see, : Fresh green // upon // the tree. See also * Anapaest * Dactyl * Tristich A tercet is composed of ...
with some use of iambs and the final line of each stanza containing only two feet. It uses an eight line
stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian ''stanza'' , "room") is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes, but they are not required to have ei ...
with the rhyme scheme ABABCDCD and regularly uses
feminine rhyme Masculine ending and feminine ending are terms used in prosody, the study of verse form. "Masculine ending" refers to a line ending in a stressed syllable. "Feminine ending" is its opposite, describing a line ending in a stressless syllable. T ...
for the A and C rhymes, often rhyming the name "Dolores". A considerable quantity of catalexis is present, but this is fairly regular in its application. The poem, like a number of others by Swinburne, is notable for its use of anapestic verse to create a serious and somber mood rather than the comic effect for which anapests are more commonly encountered in English, as in the
limerick Limerick ( ; ga, Luimneach ) is a western city in Ireland situated within County Limerick. It is in the province of Munster and is located in the Mid-West which comprises part of the Southern Region. With a population of 94,192 at the 2 ...
.


Controversial aspects

The poem demonstrates most of the controversial themes for which Swinburne became notorious. It conflates the cruel yet libidinous pagan goddess figure of Dolores, the Lady of Pain with
Mary, Mother of Jesus Mary; arc, ܡܪܝܡ, translit=Mariam; ar, مريم, translit=Maryam; grc, Μαρία, translit=María; la, Maria; cop, Ⲙⲁⲣⲓⲁ, translit=Maria was a first-century Jews, Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Jose ...
and associates the poem itself, through its parenthetical titular text (''Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs'', i.e., "Our Lady of Seven Sorrows") with the Seven Dolours of the Virgin. It laments the passing of the worship of classical deities in favour of Christian morality (277 ''What ailed us, O gods, to desert you , For creeds that refuse and restrain?''), a theme more fully elaborated in Swinburne's "
Hymn to Proserpine “Hymn to Proserpine” is a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in ''Poems and Ballads'' in 1866. The poem is addressed to the goddess Proserpina, the Roman equivalent of Persephone, but laments the rise of Christianity for displacing ...
". Finally, sadomasochistic themes and characteristics are attributed to the Lady of Pain throughout (397 ''I could hurt thee — but pain would delight thee'', etc.)


Related works

The poem was parodied in 1872 by Arthur Clement Hilton, then a student at
Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
, in his poem "Octopus", which substitutes the character of the Lady of Pain for that of the titular mollusc. Where Swinburne begins his poem, in describing the Lady of Pain, "''Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel , Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour''", Hilton begins "''Strange beauty, eight-limbed and eight-handed, , Whence camest to dazzle our eyes?''". The
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of
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features a character called the Lady of Pain, which may have been inspired by the poem's central character. The short comics story "
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", by
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(originally published in ''Vertigo: Winter's Edge #3'', reprinted in ''
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'' Volume III, pp. 510-519), tells how Swinburne wrote the poem after meeting
Desire Desires are states of mind that are expressed by terms like " wanting", " wishing", "longing" or "craving". A great variety of features is commonly associated with desires. They are seen as propositional attitudes towards conceivable states of ...
, who only told him that its name begins with a "D". In his book ''Dylan's Visions of Sin'', literary critic
Christopher Ricks Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks (born 18 September 1933) is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University (US), co-director of the Editorial Institute at Boston Uni ...
shows many parallels and a possible influence on
Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
's song "
Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" is a song by American singer-singwriter Bob Dylan. First released as the closing track on Dylan's 1966 album ''Blonde on Blonde'', the song lasts 11 minutes and 22 seconds, occupying the entire side four of the doub ...
". The fourth stanza of the poem was read by the character
Persephone In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Persephone ( ; gr, Περσεφόνη, Persephónē), also called Kore or Cora ( ; gr, Κόρη, Kórē, the maiden), is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. She became the queen of the underworld aft ...
in a cinematic in the MMORG ''
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''.


See also

{{wikisource *
Poems and Ballads ''Poems and Ballads, First Series'' is the first collection of poems by Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in 1866. The book was instantly popular, and equally controversial. Swinburne wrote about many taboo topics, such as lesbianism, sado-ma ...
*
Decadent movement The Decadent movement (Fr. ''décadence'', “decay”) was a late-19th-century artistic and literary movement, centered in Western Europe, that followed an aesthetic ideology of excess and artificiality. The Decadent movement first flourishe ...
* "
Hymn to Proserpine “Hymn to Proserpine” is a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne, published in ''Poems and Ballads'' in 1866. The poem is addressed to the goddess Proserpina, the Roman equivalent of Persephone, but laments the rise of Christianity for displacing ...
" * " The Triumph of Time"


External links


Text and Commentary
British poems 1866 poems Works by Algernon Charles Swinburne